Wallace tree structures are well-known adder tree structures in the art and are used in a variety of application. Each Wallace tree is composed of several basic adder units positioned in several stages.
One Wallace tree structure implements a 4:2 adder as a basic adder unit. This unit has five input terminals for receiving bits of a common weight and has three output terminals, one representing a sum value and the other two terminals representing carry-out values in redundant form. In the conventional Wallace tree structure, many of the input terminals to various basic adder units are forced to carry a zero bit value resulting in a Wallace tree structure that occupies significant area. It is desirable to reduce this circuit area.